Utah's Outdoor MuseumBy Marcia Hadenfeldt  Courtesy of Castle Country-p.M.Tullius The ancestors of the modern Pueblo people made their homes in the mountains, desert canyons and mesa tops of Southern Utah. The Colorado Plateau has become an archaeologist's study area rich with the code to explain the past. Visitors to the state can explore the towers, pit houses, cave dwellings, and pecked and painted rock art left here over thousands of years to picture the way of life of the ancient ones.
The Grand Gulch Primitive Area in southeast Utah features rock-walled network filled with examples of Basketmaker and Pueblo ruins. Here, around every bend and in any of the myriad canyons that crisscross Cedar Mesa, one might discover the ruin sitting precariously on a ledge, the kiva dug deep below the steep side. Colored pictographs or etched petroglyphs on the patinaed rock walls tell the story of a hunt or of the birth of a baby. Some of the artifacts recovered from these sites include arrowheads, baskets, clay pots, sandals, shell beads, stone tools, woven mats and ancient corn cobs that tell the tale of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle that lead to early agriculture, established villages and, eventually, abandoned homesites.  Courtesy of Hatch River Expeditions Utah's history is rich with stories of hard-working pioneers striving to settle the many different types of terrain the land offered them. The Anasazi were the ancient culture whose story has only recently been told, and whose pioneering now contributes to the fascination of the outdoor museum that is Utah today. Drive the backways, hike the trails, run the rivers, hire a guide, acquire the proper permits to discover this museum as the ancient ones might have. |
